Memory practices of women’s religious empowerment. Underground female healers and Buddhist ascetics of the Soviet era
Through the lens of memory practices and hagiographic representations (not only narrative, but also architectural), the article examines the lives and ongoing deification of three influential women who engaged in religious and healing activities during the Soviet suppression of religion in the Buddh...
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| Vydáno v: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/emscat, |
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| Hlavní autor: | |
| Médium: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Jazyk: | Anglais |
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Études mongoles et sibériennes, centrasiatiques et tibétaines
2026
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| On-line přístup: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Shrnutí: | Through the lens of memory practices and hagiographic representations (not only narrative, but also architectural), the article examines the lives and ongoing deification of three influential women who engaged in religious and healing activities during the Soviet suppression of religion in the Buddhist society of Kalmykia. Addressing questions of women’s empowerment in conservative religions facilitated by the state atheistic policy and persecution of monastics, I theorise the concept of “underground” as a socio-cultural space which allows for the emergence of female religious authority in the historically male-dominated Kalmyk Buddhist milieu, further reinforced by patriarchal social structures. The posthumous recognition of Soviet-era female religious practitioners as divine emanations, while a new, grassroots development for Kalmykia, can also be regarded as evolving into both an empowerment and an appropriation of these women and their memories by the Buddhist institution, or what we might consider an attempt to once again tame the “female underground”. |
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